It's funny. My last post on here from January talks about Rick and I making our New Year's Resolution to add to our family. And here I am, three months later, with news that we are indeed adding to our family. Whaddaya know? A resolution that's actually gonna happen. We just found out on Saturday, and the baby probably won't be here until early December, but we are super excited. I have my first doctor's appointment next Thursday. For now, I'm still in a state of disbelief. I won't believe it until I hear a heartbeat or see my tiny bean-sized baby. You would think three positive pregnancy tests would be enough assurance, but it's just not. I took two that Saturday. And then I got all paranoid, so tonight before church, I went and bought another one. And of course, it was positive. Most people think we'll have another girl. I kinda hope we do. But I also kinda want a boy. We'll see.

As you may or may not know, I started making hairbows and other hair accessories recently. We have a friend named Carol who opened a store here in Mckinney off of the square. It's a home and garden consignment shop, but she also sells things that local people have made, and she offered to let me sell my bows in her store! So, I am staying busy making my initial inventory....big bows, little bows, medium sized bows, flower clips, felt clips, bow hangers, and beaded bobby pins (hopefully). I'm hoping to have at least 30 things to take...but I think I'll end up with even more. I'm pretty thrilled, and having such a supportive husband as I have is wonderful. Oh, and having two little girls to put my pretty creations on is pretty wonderful, too.

I've also had three requests for knitted hats in the last week. I like doing hats. Hats are easy and fast. As are scarves.

I also start pre-cal on the 19th. Boo.

I stapled my thumb today, and it hurt. Only one end of the staple went in, but it went all the way down to my thumbnail. Ouch.

And our new year's resolution this year is to add to our family. We just decided now is as good a time as ever, and we don't want there to be a huge age gap between the kiddos. Madeline said she will name the future baby "Ick." Hopefully, this year our resolution will come true. I'm already taking prenatal vitamins in anticipation of being preggers. I'm hoping when I do get pregnant, that this pregnancy goes smoother than my other two. But if it doesn't, it's always worth it in the end anyhow.

We carved pumpkins tonight. Ahem, Rick carved pumpkins tonight. The girls and I decided on the patterns, and I transferred the pattern to the pumpkin, and then I let Rick deal with the carving part while I made dinner. They turned out wonderfully. One is a "spooky" face designed by Savannah. The other is a witch that we had a pattern for. I also roasted the pumpkin seeds. They turned out better than I remember them being in previous years. I ate too many of them.

Today was 50's Day at Savannah's school as part of Red Ribbon Week. They could either wear a 50's outfit, 50 of something, or the number 50. So there go me and my bright ideas. I decided she would wear 50 red bows. In the end, I almost ran out of red ribbon. I had grosgrain red ribbon, some red ribbon with wire edges, some white ribbon with red ladybugs, some red satin ribbon, and some red ribbon with white polka dots. I used every single bit of all 5 rolls. I was a little bit sad. Off topic: I found the cutest ribbon at Michael's. It's white with orange owls on it. I must have it. OK, I'm happy again. Back to the bows. I made two for her hair and the other 48 went on a sash I made out of a strip of pink ribbon. Some had pin backs and I put barrettes on the few that I thought would be really cute hair bows. It turned out super cute. But it took a good few hours. And I burned myself a lot with my hot glue gun. I was glad that Savannah only lost three bows today, she came home with one of them. She also gave one to her friend, Skyler, who's in her class. And the other one, she remembered is on the stage in the gym.

Speaking of gym, Savannah was Player of the Day in her PE class today. She got a certificate, and she was so excited. She's mentioned to me before about how much she would love to be Player of the Day. We made a big deal out of it. Her class was also the class with the most kids at Spring Creek Barbecue on Spirit Night last month. Sadly, Savannah was sick that night, and we couldn't go. But the whole class got their prize today. Each kid got a Spring Creek Barbecue T-shirt, a keychain, and a $25 gift card to Spring Creek BBQ! Mommy was very excited. And so was Daddy. And so is Nana. Savannah's more excited about the keychain. She put it in her treasure box.

Madeline fell asleep at Mom's house last night about 30 minutes before church started. She just laid down in the middle of the floor and fell asleep. So, we left her with Mimi. Then, I thought she would sleep through the night, because that's usually what she does. Instead, she woke up at two (I was still awake) and played in her room for two hours. Then she decided to go back to bed, and she slept until seven. And she's still awake.

We lost a fish today. And our frog. :(. The girls don't know about either. But somehow, they can look in the fish tank and immediately know a fish is missing and which one it is. They have them all named, and they remember the names of each fish. I never remember which is which. We are down to 5 fish. We are sad each time we lose a fish. A while back, we had an outbreak of a parasite called ick, which killed all the fish in our tank. Thanks to a wonderful man at Petsmart, we got rid of it. But we were pretty sad losing the fish that died in the outbreak. We'd had them a while. I almost cried. Over a fish. Sad. And the one that we lost today was the smallest in the tank. I always called him Nemo, because the first week we had him, he continuously tried to jump out of the tank through the opening where the filter is. I was scared for a whole week that I would come to find a fish on the table outside of the tank. But, eventually little Nemo gave up. Poor little guy. Hopefully, we won't continue our trend of lose one fish, buy three to replace it.

I bought a book last week for myself called The Love Dare, and I am so excited to start it. It has forty days worth of short passages on different qualities that make for a good marriage. For instance, the first day is about patience. After reading the passage, there is a dare. And then there is a place to check off when you have completed that dare along with space to write about how it went. The first dare is to not say a single negative thing to your spouse for a whole day. I haven't "started" the book yet, because I haven't gotten past the first dare. Bad me. I'm trying though. It's my goal for tomorrow. I skimmed through the book, and I think I'm really going to like it. I think it will really be helpful. There are quite a few things I could work on. And many of the things, especially that first one, I can apply to my girls as well.

I love watching my girls sleep. I always have. They're so cute when they're asleep.

Today and yesterday, I worked at the Book Fair at Savannah's school. I remember in elementary school, the book fair was the highlight of the school year. I LOVED it! And I loved working at it, too. Today, I took Madeline, even though she is still quite snotty. She had a blast flipping through the books. And, like a good girl, she put them all back where they belonged. I was so proud of her. We're going as a family on Thursday after school to buy books. The girls are really excited.

Tomorrow I am going grocery shopping. Tomorrow is also pajama day at Savannah's school. She's been excited about that for a whole week. I would be, too.

Thursday, I have a test in trig. I am so not looking forward to it. I've gotten A's on my two tests so far, not so hopeful for this one.

Friday, we are carving pumpkins.

I recorded five songs with my ukulele the other day in the studio. It was great, wonderful...I did two or more tracks of each song for safe measure. My voice was strong. I was happy. Then, Rick came in and we listened to the tracks. Previously, he had told me to just click record on the track I wanted to record on and not to worry about muting the tracks. We didn't have the speakers on to playback the tracks as a way of avoiding background noise in the mic. However, I didn't realize and Rick forgot that the sound from the previous tracks still can make its way on to the proceeding tracks due to a connection something or other...the point is, by the 13th track, you could hear that song along with the 12 previous tracks all mushed in it. Chaos. I have to rerecord all of it. Everything. OK, track 1 is ok...but I'm not happy with it. I'm a perfectionist. I was in there for hours. Man.

Did I mention Rick gave me another ukulele? He bought a soprano one for himself, and that's the one I've been playing. But, after I heisted that one, he also bought a concert ukulele. It's beautiful. And after it was delivered, he opened the box, looked at it, handed it to me, and said, "It's yours. But...I get to play it when I want to." I love it. It sounds different than the other uke, and it's taken some getting used to singing wise, but it plays nice and feels nice.

My Savannah is the Alpha Wolf for her class this week. That means she displayed good behavior and leadership skills. They had an assembly on Friday morning that we went to where they call out the names of the Alpha Wolves for each class, and then they all go sit on the stage. She was SO excited! Her teacher had called us the night before to give us a heads up. Then, Rick and I had to think of a good reason for going to GMS (Good morning Slaughter) with her. Luckily, she gave us the perfect reason. She said, "My teacher said we kind of had a rough day, and she might not pick an Alpha Wolf for this week." And so, Rick said, "Well, we'll just have to go with you in the morning and talk to her." hehe. I was so proud of her. I have a parent-teacher conference on Monday. Nothing bad, just a routine conference. Her teacher loves her, and we love her teacher. I wish she could have Mrs. Tillett for every grade. She's seriously awesome.

Oh, and did I mention I'm a room mom? I might have. But I'm still super excited about it. Super. Excited.

The woman working with at the book fair today was shocked when Madeline came up to me and said, "Mommy, did you read chapter books when you were a baby?" The other woman said, "Did I just hear her say 'chapter books? What does she know about chapter books? She's three!" If Madeline hadn't been dragging me out the door (She was ready to go home), I would have told her that we've read Charlotte's Web, Winnie-the-Pooh, nearly all of The House on Pooh Corner, about twelve chapters so far in Anne of Green Gables, and we're reading Pippi Longstocking right now (which my girls are loving!). Yep, Madeline is quite familiar with chapter books.

Savannah can read and spell and write. She could do those things before, yes, but now she is spelling words like 'orange.' And she can read all the books that she brings home from school. It's so awesome to watch. Really. 'Orange' is one of their new sight words for this week, and Savannah can already read it and spell it...after two days! Wow! Madeline's picking up on it, too. She memorizes the books that Savannah brings home from school...we have some of them at home, thanks to Mom and her generous donation of a ton of leveled readers to the girls. Savannah had a book last week called "Hello," and I didn't even know we had it until Madeline brought it to me on Thursday and started reading it. So wonderful.

Man...I love my family.

I don't have a pretty to put on here today. Oh well.
Tonight post-meeting was rather hectic. Madeline slept through the whole sermon, and then afterwards decided to wake up and throw this tremendous tantrum. Ok, it started out small, and then progressed rather quickly into this blood-curdling scream that everybody and their brother could hear. I couldn't wait to get out of the building. So, I got to the parking lot, put all my stuff down, and then I dug through my purse for a while trying to find my keys. I got the girls in, assured Mrs. Bell that Madeline was okay...and then I backed up and started to drive away. Five seconds later, Savannah screamed from the backseat, "MOMMYYY YOUR PURRSEEE!! It's backthereIsawit." (Yes, she said that part rather fast). So, I put the CRV in reverse, got out, got my stuff hoping no one would see me, which of course people did. How embarrassing.

To add to it all, it's possible Savannah could be sick again. She's been coughing since she got home from school. Yet another reason, I want to home school...avoidance of all those sick germy kids and their eh, germs. Really though, ew. Then again, this has been a rather sickly year for all us Nolan girls.

I have trig homework that I was supposed to print out and do, and I haven't done it. It's due tomorrow. Bad me. I think I'll just copy it down on notebook paper and do it. Our printer has been having issues. Surely my professor wouldn't mind...at least it would be done. Right?

I got this catalog a while back from Rainbow Resource Center, a home school materials supplier. Their catalog is well over 1000 pages long. Seriously. It's like a phone book, but even bigger. So, I've been going through it and making a wish list of stuff that I would like to eventually get or at least check out. I've been jotting things down for well over a week, and finally tonight, Rick asked me what I was writing down. "Stuff" was not an acceptable answer, and I was asked to read off the list starting on the page that I was working on. I didn't get very far before he asked if I wanted to buy those things. I said, "No. Not all of it." If only he knew there are at least 10 pages filled with items...There are SO many cool things in this catalog.

I just realized, I'm really tired. I think I'll go to bed now. Goodnight, all.